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About Me

I was born in Jamaica and lived there till I got married and eventually moved to Canada. After a long career in a large urban public library I now work part-time in local history. I have been involved for many years in genealogical research and my main interests lie in finding out more about my Jamaican family history. I hope in my musings to show the methods I used to find out more about my family.
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Saturday, 27 December 2014

Following the Cardozos -- Jamaica to Haiti to Canada

George,
Uriah and Richard Cardozo Kingston to New York 1913-- Ancestry

Before
I return to George Cardozo and how he enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary
Force in 1914 I want to describe how I researched the Cardozo family. This blog
of mine is called My Jamaican Family,
and generally speaking I have written about members of my own family both
immediate and distant.Interestingly
enough, it turns out that the Cardozo family had distant connections through
marriage to my own extended family! Thanks to another Jamaican researcher who
descends from the Cardozos, I discovered that two Cardozo brothers married two
Baylis sisters.

I
have written about the Baylis family of Port Royal in a previous post.

George
Christopher Baylis worked at the Port Royal Dock Yard with my grandfather,
William Dey Smedmore, and George married Elizabeth Huggins McDonald, the
daughter of my great-grandmother, Sarah Letitia Brown by her first husband, Donald
McDonald. After Donald died Sarah married Daniel Elias Brown and their second
daughter, Amanda, married my grandfather, William Smedmore.Two of George’s and Elizabeth’s daughters, Lily
and Hilda, married two Cardozo brothers, John Emanuel and Solomon.These two brothers were the grandsons of the
Cardozo patriarch, Solomon Nunes Cardozo, a Sephardic Jew born about 1798 in
Jamaica. Solomon fathered at least four illegitimate children by an Elizabeth
Philipon, a native of Cuba, whom he later married and with her fathered at
least two more legitimate children, including the father of John Emanuel and
Solomon. The marriage and the baptisms of all the children took place in the
Catholic Church, and it has been difficult to find all relevant records, only
some of which have been transcribed and can be found on the website, JamaicanFamily Search.

The
eldest of Solomon Nunes Cardozo’s illegitimate children was Joseph Nunes
Cardozo who married Jeanne Louise Hérard, from Haiti.She was the daughter of Charles Rivière-Hérard,
a Haitian Army officer who fought against Henri Christophe and was briefly
President of Haiti between 1843

and
1844.Forced out of office by
revolutionaries in May 1844 he went into exile in Jamaica where he died 31
August 1850.

Charles
Rivière-Hérard -- Wikipedia

Uriah
Nunes Cardozo was a son of Joseph Nunes Cardozo and Jeanne Louise Hérard, born
in Les Cayes (formerly known as Aux Cayes) in Haiti. Without access to Haitian
records I have had to depend on other documents to come up with a possible
birth date for Uriah of about 1864. Another son, Frederick Rudolph Ambroise
Cardozo was also apparently born in Haiti. Uriah married Marie Nicholson in
1890 at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Kingston. The birth of their son,
George in Kingston was the only record of their children I could find, but from
various travel documents, including ships’ manifests such as the one shown at
the top of this post, I was able to conclude that Uriah and Marie had at least
four sons and possibly a daughter whose name I do not know. George was the
eldest, born in 1890, followed by Richard, born in 1893 in Les Cayes, Bertrand,
born in 1897 also in Les Cayes, and Franck, born in Les Cayes in 1899.

In
1913 Uriah, accompanied by his sons, George and Richard, sailed to New York
from Port Antonio, Jamaica, on board the SS
Obidense. According to the ship’s manifest they were in transit to Uriah’s
nephew, Alfred Cardozo, of 68 Wood Street, Toronto, Canada. Uriah did not
remain in Canada, but must have returned to Les Cayes, though he did make other
trips to Canada,

either
to visit Richard or Bertrand.From other
documents I have found Bertrand was a medical student studying at McGill
University. He came to Canada in 1919 to visit his cousin, Alfred, in Toronto.
As for Franck, I could find little about him in the records on Ancestry, except
for various ship’s manifests showing that he did a great deal of traveling
between Haiti and other countries. However, according to information I found
through Google, Franck became a hotelier in Port-au-Prince and with his wife
Edna built the Hotel Montana in Petionville, later managed by his two
daughters, Garthe Cardozo-Stefansonand
Nadine Cardozo-Riedl. In January 2010 the hotel was all but destroyed in an earthquake which caused tremendous damage in Port-au-Prince.

But
to return to George and his brother Richard.They remained in Canada and to my surprise I found that Richard also
enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in Toronto on August 10th
1916. George had been killed in action on April 22nd 1915.Did his death prompt Richard to enlist as
well?

In
my next post I will explore George’s brief career in the Canadian Expeditionary
Force and the circumstances of his death.